Community

Dan Fontes paints murals on city buildings, warehouses and under highways

Nearly 30 years ago, in 1983, Dan Fontes was under Highway 580 at Harrison Street in North Oakland painting on a massive round concrete highway support beam. With cars speeding by, he diligently worked on his piece of art: a realistic depiction of a 30-foot tall giraffe craning its neck up toward the freeway. As Fontes painted, a police car pulled up…

Free animal adoptions at Maddie’s Matchmaker Adoptathon

Miss Twiggy is an overweight Rottweiler with hyperthyroidism and an affectionate personality. She’s 4 years old, fairly slow moving and loves to cuddle. And she lives in Oakland’s animal shelter. If Miss Twiggy is adopted this weekend, not only is her adoption free but she’ll also earn the shelter, Oakland Animal Services, $1,000.

Oakland honors military service on Memorial Day

One-foot-tall national flags were stuck on both sides of the path at the Mountain View Cemetery in North Oakland, where more than 100 people convened on Monday to pay respect to deceased military service members at the cemetery’s 90th Memorial Day commemoration.

Adoptable animal of the week: Eddie

Oakland North is continuing with our feature. Every Tuesday, we spotlight an “Animal of the Week” that’s up for adoption. We usually have an animal from Oakland Animal Services but this week we are highlighting a dog named Eddie who is living in a foster home in North Oakland.

Summer treat series: Oakland Chinatown

Over the next month, Oakland North is featuring a food series on summer treats in Oakland. Chinatown is the first installment in the series. One day last week, two Oakland North reporters wandered around Oakland’s Chinatown sampling all sorts of different Asian treats, from lotus seed buns to basil seed jello to pork meat cookies–these are their top ten.

At packed budget meeting, a debate over the fate of libraries, city services

Equipped with whistles, banners and plastic noisemakers, hundreds of people crammed into the City Council Chambers on Thursday evening to voice their concerns about the city’s proposed budget cuts at a special hearing held by the city officials. The crowd was so large that many had to be relocated to another hearing room for safety reasons.

The Gathering Place offers a new way for youth in foster care to visit their parents

Across from Highway 880, a non-descript five-story beige building with few windows sits on a corner in downtown Oakland. For years, this was the place where many foster children and their biological parents would have to meet if they wanted to visit each other. Now, there’s a new visitation center in Alameda County–called the Gathering Place–and it had its grand opening on Wednesday.